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Oak Tree Trap out

Located three seperate hives on a friends property in Cisco, Texas over the weekend. I know the time of the year is not right but i am already preparing for the trap outs next year. Here are my questions.

1. Do i need to use attractant in the trap box or just brood comb?
2. How long should it take for the bees to be all or moslty all in the trap box?
3. Seen online where the brood comb will be used by the bees to make new queens. Is this true or should you introduce a queen?
4. The three hives are 10 foot, 12 foot, and 16 foot off the ground any tips would be appreciated.
5. All three hives are in huge oak trees so anybody with knowledge of the best things to do in this type of tree would be appreciated.
6. I know very little but am fascinated by the bees. What is the best time of year to trap them? Time of day if that matters also?
7. I will have to transport the bees 1 and 1/2 hours home tips on that would be great.
8. I seem to get stung on the nose repeatedly when scouting for honey trees is that normal or am i retarded and need to quit sticking my face in the hive?
9. Last question, the one have that i was able to actually look in (right before my eyes swelled shut) had what looked like greay conrete over the opening. Was this propolis that was sun backed? It was as hard as conrete also.

Re: Oak Tree Trap out

Send me an e-mail cchoganjr@scrtc.com and I will send you info on a trapping system which should answer all your questions, and photos of actual traps in progress. Everything is free, no charge to beekeepers.

Also sugges you use the search engine in the upper right. Type in, trap outs. Lots and lots of great info there.

Re: Oak Tree Trap out

Tacobass, definitely get Mr. Hogan's instructions. They are easy to follow. You could go ahead and attach the hive adapter to the tree this fall so you are ready to go in the spring. Good luck on the height, if you had access to a lift, that would be the way to go on getting the adapter added to the trees and you could place platforms there for the trap hives to sit on in the spring. I personally wouldn't go over 10 foot on a ladder in a tree, but you may have more guts than me.

The bad thing for you is that it is 90 minutes from your home. You will need to make a few trips to the site. The instructions will go into that. You need to see if you can get some comb and maybe some brood from a beek in the area. That will increase your success rate. As far as traveling with the bees, remove the hive from the trap at dusk and seal it up. I would ratchet strap the whole thing together. You may want to put it in the trunk or back of a truck, but other than that there isn't any special requirements. If you only have a hatchback you may want to cover the hive in a sheet in case some get out or you have an accident and they all get out!

You may want to purchase a queen and use the trees as a worker bee supply system that you can return to again and again. You could make a queen with eggs/brood, but if the queen isn't in there you will need to get that from another beek. Queens are cheap and you will know what kind of bees you have in that case. The workers only live 6 to 8 weeks, so after two months the hive is completely replenished with workers from the new queen. If they need to make a queen it takes time for the queen to be born and then mate and then start to lay.

If you get stung once the other bees are attracted to the same spot due to the pheromones. I wouldn't stick my head in there as they seem a bit aggressive, at least not without a veil. Get a sting on your eye and you could lose your vision in that eye. I only have one good eye, so I'm particularly nervous about that one.

Not sure about the concrete stuff in there. Could it actually be concrete? I know that some people use that to seal up bee trees as it is cheap and quick. I wouldn't think there would be much sun inside of a bee tree. Propolis is made up from sticky stuff in the area and is usually a yellowish brown or dark brown, but maybe you have some kind of crazy gray making sticky stuff tree in TX that we don't get up here.

Since you are in TX you may have to worry about Africanized bees. If you re-queen you won't have to worry about that after 6 to 8 weeks. I'm thinking they are not africanized as you were able to write this post after poking around there hive without protection.